An Open Letter to Facebook

To Whomever Arbitrarily Decides What is Ethical On Facebook,

Why can’t we be friends?

I recently had the displeasure of having your team delete a community that I spent thousands of hours over the course of two years building. When you accepted our money and entered a business relationship allowing us to advertise, you encouraged us to invest time and energy into our page, which we did. When you stopped our ads but allowed us to continue to operate our page, I assumed we’d at least be able to continue our organic efforts to share information with our very engaged community (which you did allow for a period of time).

It is unfortunate that you choose to align with decades of racist, regressive policies and ban (with HIGHLY selectively enforcement) any information about ‘marijuana.’ However, I urge you to reconsider what is harmful to the community.

Our page (targeted specifically at adults in states where voters have chosen to legalize cannabis) offered information on safe, legal medical cannabis options. We shared resources for people that otherwise would be risking their freedom by turning to the black market. We helped connect parents with organizations and therapies that stopped their children’s seizures for the first time in their painful lives. We shared petitions begging for Veterans to be granted access to one of the only medicines that is helping prevent 22+ Veteran suicides a day. We fostered a community that offered hope to patients facing terminal diagnoses.

You arbitrarily shut that all down. Is the world now a better place?

Since you seem to have had your heads buried in the sand these last few years, I wanted to make sure you were aware that cannabis is now a fully legal multi-billion dollar industry predicted to grow as quickly as the smartphone market. Cannabis in some form is now legal in more than half of the United States. Your own platform currently hosts thousands of pages for cannabis dispensaries, services, manufacturers and many illegal black market dealers.

For a company attempting to stay relevant with an aging user base, you’re pretty out of touch with your own community. Were you aware that 58% of American adults support federally legalizing cannabis? Here are a few facts to consider:

-The marijuana industry could be bigger than the NFL by 2020 (Washington Post)
-U.S. market for legal cannabis grew 74% in 2014 to $2.7b, up from $1.5b in 2013 (Arcview Group)
-Revenues could reach $35b by 2020 if federally legalized. (Greenwave Advisors)

If you would like to explore how you could start to correct some of these ridiculous grievances against our community, I’d be happy to engage with your team (once our page is restored, of course.) Otherwise, we’ll have to take our fans and advertising budgets elsewhere.

Recent Comments

Categories

The statements made regarding these products have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. The efficacy of these products has not been confirmed by FDA-approved research. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. All information presented here is not meant as a substitute for or alternative to information from healthcare practitioners. Please consult your health care professional about potential interactions or other possible complications before using any product. The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act require this notice.